Everyone has at least one. That ‘friend’ on Facebook who repeatedly posts stuff that makes you realise you have nothing in common or, worse still, that you find most of their views are actually objectionable. You know the type – you’ll be surfing your news feed of a lazy Saturday morning and amongst the proud parent moments, holiday snaps and motivational quotes that make you go ‘meh’, you come across some post with shades of the men’s right activist (Isn’t my ex-wife awful because she still wants to look after her children and isn’t keen for me to have anything to do with them even though I’m a misogynist, alcoholic son of an arsehole who doesn’t want to get help…). Or another echoing the movement to reclaim Australia (by whom? Dangerous dickheads. From whom? Dangerous dickheads. But I digress…). You blanch. You look again. Yes, it really is that person you went to school with 20-ish years ago that you actually hung around with a bit. Who would have thunk it?
And what to do in response? My short answer? Unfriend. Stat. But here, I must confess, I suggest you do as I say and not as I do. Because the reality is I have not unfriended these people. I can’t quite articulate exactly why, except for a vague feeling that I might, at some point, take them on and challenge their arrogant, extreme views. I don’t ‘like’ their posts – even the ones which are less offensive – and I certainly don’t comment on them. But unfriending them closes off the possibility that one day I might work up the courage to say what I actually think of them.
There’s another reason I haven’t unfriended these awful people. I like being aware that there are people in the world with different views to me, even if I find them offensive. Men’s rights activists, ignorant dickheads spouting empty, nationalistic rhetoric, anti-vaxxers, flat-earthers – all the crazies on the internet – they all represent a small subset of the society in which we live and they don’t go away when we pretend they’re not there.
But the trouble with social media is that it affords people a certain level of confidence and perceived impunity when it comes to insulting people or taking them to task in a most offensive and – in extreme cases – threatening way. Let’s say 10 years ago you’d run into this character at a school reunion. A few of you had got into the kind of meaningful conversation which I feel is rare at these kind of events but nevertheless let’s go with it. At some point in the conversation this person has made a comment which alludes to the kind of offensive, ignorant beliefs which are writ large on Facebook. And let’s say you respectfully question them about their beliefs. And there ensues an exchange where it becomes abundantly clear that you are in furious disagreement. It’s likely that at some point one or other of you will respectfully suggest that you agree to disagree. Perhaps you’ll then move on to talk about other things, or perhaps you’ll move on altogether and talk to other people.
The point is, in this face-to-face context the debate is very unlikely to escalate to increasingly inflammatory insults. Critically, the only people who can participate in that conversation are other people at the gathering – and the chances that all of the people you went to school with have become card-carrying members of Reclaim Australia or some similarly offensive group is slim.
Online, however, were you to question your ‘friend’s’ views in a way that revealed your own stance, it is possible they will take a more aggressively defensive position. Importantly, the conversation will be visible and sharable with an ever increasing number of ‘friends’ and ‘friends’ of ‘friends’. And we’ve all seen the ugliness that lurks online when people express a polarising view one way or another.
So where does that leave me when my lazy Saturday morning is disrupted by an ignorant flat-earther revealing their true feelings on Facebook? With my cursor hovering over the ‘unfriend’ link wondering which is the most courageous course of action – unfriending or trying to engage in a rational argument in a place where the rules of engagement are contested?
